The developer Paddy Kelly says his Shrewsbury Road home, Clonmore, is sale agreed for €8.1 million just a month after being put on the market by its receiver. That's 19 per cent shy of its €10 million asking price, and a far cry from the €30 million-plus Kelly quietly sought for it in 2009.
The selling price, which Kelly gave to the financial-news service Bloomberg, is a lacklustre outcome for one of the best sites on the exclusive Dublin road. The house, which was built in 1992, is not protected, so the buyer can happily follow in the footsteps of recently arrived neighbours, who have mostly demolished existing homes, often retaining just the facades.
The sale of Fintragh in April 2017, by the Assaf family to the packaging millionaire Patrick Doran, for €8.45 million – equating to €12.1 million per acre – marked a peak for Shrewsbury Road. The Clonmore sale represents a lesser €11.6 million per acre for a debatably superior site.
Property values on the Ballsbridge road have by some measures slumped back to late-1990s levels, in sharp contrast to wider south Dublin city, where less extraordinary family homes are trading at around 2005 levels – not far from their Celtic Tiger peaks. In 1998 the Blacktie founder Niall O’Farrell paid the equivalent of €11.15 million per acre for a 0.41ac site with significant frontage on to Shrewsbury Road; shortly after, O’Malley Homes paid about €9.14 million for the adjoining 0.98ac Chester Beatty Library site, which had no road frontage other than its driveway and no planning permission. The O’Malleys endured a 10-year saga to secure planning at undoubtedly significant cost, before selling it to the listed housebuilder Glenveagh in 2017 for less than €11 million with the benefit of full planning permission.
Paddy Kelly says only one serious bidder emerged for his former Shrewsbury Road home, and with the rumour mill in overdrive, smart money is on (yet another) aviation-tycoon buyer.
Nearby, on Temple Road in Dartry, Dublin 6’s most esteemed address, three top-class houses that have been on the market for more than €5 million for some time have all reduced their asking prices lately. High Cross, on less than an acre of south-facing grounds, has been for sale since February 2015; it has dropped its price several times, from €7.5 million to its current €5.95 million.
The apparent downturn in Dublin's high-end market is echoed by a recent Knight Frank report, which identified that prices of luxury homes had dropped for the first time since 2013, citing uncertainty around Brexit combined with an easing of pent-up demand as potential reasons.
